Quick Look: X-ray Telescopes Reveal the "Bones" of a Ghostly Cosmic Hand @ChandraXray

Chandra X-ray Observatory | Quick Look: X-ray Telescopes Reveal the "Bones" of a Ghostly Cosmic Hand @ChandraXray | Uploaded October 2023 | Updated October 2024, 4 days ago.
A cosmic ‘hand’ has been X-rayed in a new image from NASA.

NASA’s Chandra and IXPE telescopes joined forces to capture this remarkable image.

MSH 15-52 is a cloud of energetic particles that resembles a human hand.

Astronomers use these X-ray data to learn more how objects like this form.

More at: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2023/msh1552

$Data Sonification: Carina Nebula (All) Video Description: New sonifications map a near-infrared image of the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula, captured by NASA’s Webb Telescope, to a symphony of sounds. Musicians assigned unique notes to the semi-transparent, gauzy regions and very dense areas of gas and dust in the nebula, culminating in a buzzing soundscape. The sonification scans the image from left to right. The new sounds were also adapted to a video, allowing sighted viewers to watch as a vertical line moves across the frame. The soundtrack is vibrant and full, representing the detail in this gigantic, gaseous cavity that has the appearance of a mountain range. The Carina Nebula is a large cloud of gas and dust where stars are forming or have already formed. The gas and dust in the top half of the image are represented in blue hues and windy, drone-like sounds. The bottom half of the image, represented in ruddy shades of orange and red, has a clearer, more melodic composition. Brighter light in the image is louder. The vertical position of light also dictates the frequency of sound. For example, bright light near the top of the image sounds loud and high, but bright light near the middle is loud and lower pitched. Dimmer, dust-obscured areas that appear lower in the image are represented by lower frequencies and clearer, undistorted notes. Separate tracks (also available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/UeYbXcE3kM8 and https://youtu.be/ITLlD4YMqKM and https://youtu.be/CRWigGQhVyQ) more easily pick out the meandering melodic line that represents the nebula’s “mountain range” as it rises and falls in the image, through the center of the frame, from left to right. This jagged line between denser and thinner areas of gas and dust is the arc of the sonification’s melody. All stars are represented by a combination of pitches and processed piano notes, but the brightest stars with longer diffraction spikes also carry crashes and clangs from cymbals. This version first represents the entire image. The second version (at https://youtu.be/UeYbXcE3kM8) only includes sounds from the top portion of the image, and the third file (at https://youtu.be/CRWigGQhVyQ) only includes sounds from the bottom half of the image. Listen to the second and third files to discern the “mountain top” feature in the image. A fourth file only plays the notes that represent stars. Listen to all of the tracks for a more complex understanding of how sounds were adapted to Webb’s image of the Cosmic Cliffs. This sonification does not represent sounds recorded in space. Two musicians mapped the telescope’s data to sound, carefully composing music to accurately represent details the team would like listeners to focus on. In a way, this sonification is like modern dance or an impressionist painting – it converts Webb’s image to a new medium to engage and inspire listeners. Sonification Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and Kim Arcand (CXC/SAO), Matt Russo & Andrew Santaguida (SYSTEM Sounds), Quyen Hart (STScI), Claire Blome (STScI), and Christine Malec (consultant); Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI For more information, visit: https://chandra.si.edu/sound/$ $Tour: Cosmic Harmonies: Sonifications From NASA Telescopes Astronomers often look at objects in space through multiple telescopes. Because different telescopes can detect different types of light, each brings its own pieces of information to understanding whatever is beingobserved. This is similar in some ways to how different notes of the musical scale can be played together to create harmonies that are impossible with single notes alone. In the past few years, NASA has been producing “sonifications” of astronomical data of objects in space. This project takes the digital data captured by its telescopes in space — most of which is invisible to our unaided eyes — and translates them into musical notes and sounds so they can be heard rather than seen. Each layer of sound in these sonifications represents particular wavelengths of light detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope in various combinations. R Aquarii is a system with two stars — a white dwarf and a red giant — in orbit around each other. In the sonification of R Aquarii, the volume changes in proportion to the brightness of sources in Hubble’s visible light and Chandra’s X-ray image, while the distance from the center dictates the musical pitch, meaning the higher notes are farther out. We can hear jets from the white dwarf as the cursor travels near the two o’clock and eight o’clock positions. The ribbon-like arcs captured by Hubble create a rising and falling melody that sounds similar to a set of singing bowls. These are metal bowls that produce different sounds and tones when struck with a mallet. Meanwhile the Chandra data are rendered to sound more like a synthetic and windy purr. In Stephan’s Quintet, four galaxies move around each other, held together by gravity, while a fifth galaxy sits in the frame but is actually at a much different distance. The pitch in a sonification of Chandra and James Webb data changes in relationship to the brightness in different ways. The background galaxies and foreground stars in the visual images Webb detects are mapped to different notes on a synthetic glass marimba. Meanwhile, stars with diffraction spikes are played as crash symbols. The galaxies of Stephan’s Quintet themselves are heard as smoothly changing frequencies as the scan passes over them. The X-rays from Chandra, which reveal a shock wave that has superheated gas to tens of millions of degrees, are represented by a synthetic string sound. The third sonification in this new batch is Messier 104, or M104 for short, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo cluster. As we it from from Earth, the galaxy is angled nearly edge-on. This allows us a view of the spiral galaxy’s bright core and spiral arms wrapped around it. In sonifying Chandra, Spitzer, and Hubble data of M104, we begin at the top and scans toward the bottom of the image. The brightness controls the volume and the pitch, meaning the brightest sources in the image are the loudest and highest frequencies. The data from the three telescopes are mapped to different types of sounds. The X-rays from Chandra sound like a synthesizer, Spitzer’s infrared data are strings, and optical light from Hubble has bell-like tones. The core of the galaxy, its dust lanes and spiral arms, and point-like X-ray sources are all audible features in the sonification of these data. More at: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2023/sonify7/$

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